The Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomfLKQr57U
The aftermath
Oh no, that “sorry cracker arse” used the “n” word! Let’s wring our hands in unison.
Ha ha ha!
HG
I’ve watched and rewatched the clip. The comments were not performance art, but a deliberate racial diatrab directed at audience members who had bothered him. I’m in favour of performers who cross certain lines and play with taboos in their art but, clearly, what Richards was doing was not part of his routine and served no other purpose but to offend. I think the audience, collectively, knew this as they greeted his rantings first with awkward giggles, then awkward silence and finally by heading for the door. Richards looked truly pathetic throughout.
My feelings about anyone using this word have been stated previously.
“Kramer” has 20+ years experience as a stand-up comic. He should have handled the hecklers much better, he lost it. End of story.
This happened on Friday night. He was back on the same stage Saturday night.
He has also done a couple of apologies - Letterman & Leno, I think.
Even though free speech applies to everyone in the USA, this will probably put his career in the toilet. Hear that flushing sound?
He just lost it.
I agree, he looked bad. He lost it. I can understand being pissed off at probably a table full of obnoxious clowns in the front ignoring his act, talking loudly and interfering with the show. But he lost control. He crossed the line with rude, racist, personal attacks that weren’t even funny. If it was a racist personal attack that was funny, maybe that might have been excusable. But this wasn’t even funny, so there’s no excuse. . . except that we’re all human, we all make mistakes, we all lose control sometimes.
I don’t think less of him for losing it like that. I don’t think it reveals that he’s truly at heart a racist. I think he’s pretty talented and funny and it must be tough being a stand-up comic, especially when you’ve got loud and obnoxious people interrupting your act. But he did screw up and I think maybe he should have come back after taking a few deep breaths off-stage to say sorry he screwed up, sorry he lost control. Or maybe he should issue a public apology now.
No biggie. It’s just entertainment.
Maybe he was molested when he was young by a Priest.
Ladies and Germs:
The RICHARDS and GIBSON SHOW!!!
Attacking hecklers? OK, but if you DO that, then you should put them in their place. Clearly this wasn’t done.
How the HELL can he apologize for that?? But wait! This is America! You can defame cops and then APOLOGIZE!
You can kill your wife, and then WRITE A BOOK!
You can get a Lewinski by a hooker, then go on JAY LENO! whoot whoot.
A man named Cobb has recently call upon American to get racism on tape and put it on youtube.com cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2006/11/ra … youtu.html
This was NOT a MOnday NIght Football slipup, “That guy walks off the field like a gorilla.”
This was a deliberate racist attack that should have stopped after the idiotic “tree” comment.
I don’t agree. He went so far over the top here, it means something. I wouldn’t be so quick to forgive. He was asked to, and expected to, apologize during his performance the following night. He didn’t. He’s now (rightfully) banned from performing at that venue ever again. Comments like, “50 years ago, you’d have been strung up…” are indicative of a racist person IMO. There was no comical context for any of his remarks. He was having a heated exchange with some black audience members, so he got racial on them. I don’t agree with mother theresa’s assertion that this doesn’t indicate any racist tendencies. He definitely harbours some very negative opinions about blacks. His rant was just too extreme to be simply about losing one’s temper.
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, I find the yank obsession ‘with the “n” word’ bizarre (and I fucking loathe myself for using “the ‘n’ word”). I thought Richards was a complete idiot for not capitalising on the situation and turning it into something funny. As I watched I saw many opportunities to turn it back around into humour, but he didn’t do it. For this, and this alone, I think he sucks as a comic, or at least sucked on the night. I also don’t understand why he didn’t leap all over being called a cracker arse or whatever was said.
However, pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe that coffee coloured dandy in the CNN piece, "That man called me an “n.” So ultimately, black people can use niggah, as long as they don’t spell it right, one presumes - and fuck me, what does that suggest? - but white’s most definitely cannot? Cracker arse is cool, or at least a fair response? Is that how it works? Why would you empower people with a term like that? For the life of me I don’t understand.
It smacks of some bizarre linguistic apartheid. "You can say this word because you have this skin colour, but you cracker, fat chance.
HG
Agree with you HG. I like having fun with language and this includes swearing and various non-PC slurs.
Perhaps the phrase “the N word” will one day be considered too offensive, and folks will have to say “the between M and O word.” 
Maybe thats because we have other words to choose from. Nigger is hardly the most offensive. Yes, you’re right about people using the word and it’s ok when they are of a certain colour. Smacks of hipocracy…
Man, you have to patent that! 
It’s now a permanent feature in my personal dictionary, and I’ll be doing all I can do push it. Superb! :bravo:
You’re right, boong, for example, does get the skin a crawling. I think that might be that awful joke that goes with it.
How long ago was it that Patty Smith sang?
Jimi Hendrix was “the between M and O word”.
Jesus Christ and Grandma, too.
Jackson Pollock was “the between M and O word”.
“the between M and O word”, “the between M and O word”, “the between M and O word”, "the between M and O word"r,
“the between M and O word”, “the between M and O word”, “the between M and O word”.
HG
Maybe this is that new “anger-humor” I’ve been reading so much about?
Or it was a “Watch me clear the room” bet with another comic.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Or maybe he should issue a public apology now.
[/quote]He did that. Sort of made things worse, I think…
It’s a 20 second clip where he apologizes. Why did that make things worse?
Anyone got a transcript of what he said?
You’re right, boong, for example, does get the skin a crawling. I think that might be that awful joke that goes with it. HG[/quote]
Yeah well I was in a Aussie mates restaraunt and we talking about gettin’ some Coon when this big American fella comes up and says we can’t use such words.
We told him nuttin better than a bit of tasty Coon.
Of course we ware talking about Australia’s best cheese… Coon Cheese… probably sell well in the USA it would.
Been around since the 1930’s
Did you see that incident at the Australian Logies Awards in 1979, when Bert Newton introduced Muhammad Ali? He was joking around with the boxer and then said, “I like the boy” which Muhammad took to be a racial slur. It looked like Ali was going to kill him live on TV!!!
Superb.
HG
[quote=“jdsmith”]It’s a 20 second clip where he apologizes. Why did that make things worse?
Anyone got a transcript of what he said?[/quote]
edit: But then again…
[quote]Michael Richards publicly apologized for his racist tirade in an appearance on “The Late Show,” but acknowledged that such sentiment had the potential to “come[s] through and fire[s] out of me.” He tried to find an awkward parallel between his ugly rant and conflict that has arisen between blacks and whites since Hurricane Katrina.
Looking sallow, drawn, and speaking in halting fragments, Richards explained via satellite from Los Angeles to David Letterman and friend Jerry Seinfeld in New York, that he had lost his temper after some members of the audience interrupted his act and that he “took it badly,” unleashing the racist invective that TMZ first aired this morning. He apologized to the people who took “the brunt” of his abuse, saying he was “really busted up,” but then went on a strange tangent on race relations, saying he was “concerned about hate and rage” and about a “great deal of disturbance between blacks and whites” after Hurricane Katrina.
Richards did not say whether any other factors contributed to his actions, adding only that he would be doing “personal work” in the aftermath of the incident.
Audience members in the Ed Sullivan Theater, who were watching Richards on a screen, began laughing at Richards at first, thinking that the interview was a comedy skit, until Seinfeld admonished them, saying, "Stop laughing. It’s not funny."[/quote]
there is no excuse for that outburst whatsoever…its no use arguing semantics about who has the right to the n word…yer man reacted in a purely racist way; you could see from his delivery there was no humor intended…it was a purely angry reaction where he lost his cool and resorted to racist abuse…shameful…
On
the
money
He should have made fun of his penis.
The day people stop using that word, will be the day certain people stop giving it so much power.
Edit= Richards attitude about the whole thing kills me. What comedian doesn’t have to deal with hecklers? Isn’t that a right of passage?